Infineon Ships DDR3 Memory to PC Industry Developers

Infineon Technologies AG announced that it has supplied its partners among “PC industry developers” the company’s first DDR3 memory chips. The memory manufacturer said that the first computers equipped with DDR3 memory would be available as soon as in late 2006.

Infineon currently provides 800MHz and 1067MHz DDR3 memory chips with 1.5V voltage, but it expects performance of DDR3 to scale towards 1600MHz, which is more than twice the rate of today’s highest official DDR2 speed bin.

The first DDR3 customer samples from Infineon co-developed with Nanya Technology Cooperation will be available in the second half of 2006, Infineon said in a statement. Earlier the company indicated that the first DDR3 samples would be available in late 2006. Depending on the availability of matching platforms, volume production is currently planned for the end of 2006, according to Infineon.

Samsung Electronics announced in mid-February it had made the world’s first 512Mb memory chip which complies to next-generation DDR3 standard and can operate at the speed on 1066MHz. The prototype operates at 1.5V and transfers data at the speed of 1066Mbps. Samsung says DDR3 memory will be made using 80nm process technology; at present the company uses 90nm for DDR and DDR2 SDRAM production.

In addition to micro-architectural advantages DDR2 memory brings over the original DDR memory, such as, On-Die Termination (ODT) as well as larger 4-bit prefetch, additive latency, and enhanced registers, the DDR3 features self-driver calibration and data synchronization.

The market research company iSuppli expects DDR3 DRAM products to replace their predecessor DDR2 as the main volume product in 2008. iSuppli forcasts a DRR3 market share of 55% the same year. IDC predicts that the first DDR3 memory will be commercially sold in 2006, whereas in 2009 market share of DDR3 will be 65%.